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Sometimes I feel like a screw that is wound too tightly into wood, at the point where the wood is strained but not yet cracking. One more twist and the wood will splinter. I’m the wood; life is the screw.

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I used BedandBreakfast.com, also Inns.com, to locate a B & B in Barcelona. The reviews for the B & B I ultimately chose were fantastic, not one bad one in the bunch. They raved about the owner, the cooking, the facilities, all of it. I sought reviews on other sites, but there weren’t many available for the place I wanted to stay. After searching for a month and gathering quotes, I made my choice, primarily based on the information on BedandBreakfast.com, as well as the email conversations I had with the owner.

Unfortunately, our experience did not line up with our expectations, so much so that when we returned home, I wrote a diplomatic, but negative review. The owner wasn’t there. The woman who replaced her was nasty. The only breakfast was a couple of slices of bread with jam. The location was a good one for Barcelona, but was situated next door to a fire station, not exactly relaxing for a vacation. And the rooms had no air conditioning or fans, which was next to impossible to tolerate during August.

After I wrote the review, I received a message back from BedandBreakfast.com asking for proof I stayed at the B & B. I sent the confirmation email from the owner. Not good enough. I sent the Paypal receipt for the deposit. Not good enough. I even sent a photo of us in the room. Not good enough. We had paid in cash, and since the owner was not there and her replacement could not understand my request for a receipt, I had no further proof. They would not post the review. I have sent the owner 6 requests for a receipt, but except for one response in which she claimed to be out of town and that she would send one upon her return, I have had no response. BedandBreakfast.com claimed I could have been a competitor trying to bring down that B & B. Right. I fabricated emails with the owner, I sent $45 through Paypal to some fabricated account. I made up the whole thing, just to give a bad review? It’s ridiculous.

Don’t trust BedandBreakfast.com. I looked through their listings, and could not find any negative reviews. They filter them out. Don’t use their site to make your travel decision because you won’t be getting an accurate picture. Their site lies.

I have been very busy lately. I have to use a PC for work because the software I use in my job is only windows-based. As is the case with PCs, the damn thing started running really sluggy and slow. I knew it needed a cleanup and defrag and all that crap, but I just didn’t have time to sit around and stare at it while it wound its way through all that stuff.

One day while in Staples purchasing my latest round of toner and paper, I saw a circular advertising PC tuneup services for $9.99. Ah, I thought. Good deal. I’ll let them stare at the stupid thing for two hours. It would be worth it not to have to. I called and was told that if I dropped it off on Wednesday I could pick it up on Thursday morning. Even better. Wednesday after work I headed on over to leave my non-trusty-computer at the store.

It should have been clue one to me that there would be problems when, contrary to the information I had been given over the phone, I was informed nearly immediately that it would be three days to get the computer back. Oh no, that won’t work, I told them. If it was going to take three days, I was going to have to do this another time. The salesman hemmed for a moment then said it could be done the next day.

Clue one, Lara. Clue one. You weren’t paying attention…

I then said I had to get going because I had an appointment.

Clue two, Lara. Clue two. Mr. Computer Fixit guy kind of sauntered over to look at something else another Computer Fixit guy was doing, then went behind the counter and got a little widget to insert into my computer. He inserted it and stood there talking to me, telling me how my computer was the nicest he had seen come through the tune-up station in a while. He looked like Napoleon Dynamite, only without glasses. He kind of sounded like him too. In the end I spent a half an hour in there, in spite of my constant assertions that I needed to get going.

I explained that my computer had been running slowly. I explained that on vacation, my colleague had used the computer and claimed it had been infected with malware, but our office computer guy and she had removed this malware with some program from the web. I explained that in spite of this, the thing seemed to be running slowly.

Do you use Norton? No, I don’t like Norton. I have BitDefender. Bit Defender? Never heard of it. Well, it was top-rated on PC Magazine’s choice for virus protection, and I bought it based on that review, and I haven’t had any problems with it. (Incidentally, since all this went down, I perused the web and saw that PC Magazine had again rated it in their top three.)

Well, I have never heard of it. Okay, so that makes you a superstar. Can you just take my computer and let me go now?

They told me they would call me when my computer was done and sent me on my way. I wasn’t kidding that I needed the thing the next day for work. It is all I have for work and all my work is on it. Without it, I can’t do 99% of my job. Well, more like 85%, but you get the idea.

The next day, Staples had not called me by 7:30 p.m. I was beginning to worry, because I had a big response due on a file in less than five days and could not afford to be without my computer.

I called Staples and was patched to the computer center. The guy on the phone informed me that he hadn’t been able to get it to update. He had tried two times and it failed at the end each time. Okay, yeah well, I need my computer. I don’t care about the updates. I’ll get to them later. I need my machine. He said I could come pick it up. It was late and baby was going to bed, so I said it would likely be in the morning. Okay, fine.

The next day I got busy with a bunch of other things and since I didn’t have the computer, I waited to pick it up until after picking Milla up for school. When I went in, I was told it had three viruses, and that if I wanted them removed, I would have to pay $200. I asked what the viruses were and was told that they didn’t know, but it would cost $200 to have them fixed. The guy told me that the Staples tuneup hadn’t even detected BitDefender (See? It’s such a horrible program!) He said I should have gotten the Norton antivirus software, and was told that Norton had picked up the three viruses on my computer.

At this point I began to believe this was all a scam to get me to pay Staples 200 more dollars. Whatever, I said to the guy. I needed my computer yesterday so can I have it now? It was frozen in update land because, in spite of the fact I told them the night before that I was going to come and get it and to forget about the updates, apparently they had tried again multiple times anyway.

That evening I sat down to work. The computer had seemingly passed through its updates, although this proved false. Later when I had to shut down because of the other issues that arose, it turned out the thing still wanted to keep updating. I finally had to go in and manually choose updates, leaving off the last one. It’s still screwed up and every time the thing shuts down, it tries to install the last update and fails, freezing and requiring a hard reboot.

The machine ran slower than it ever had before I took it to Staples. Frustrated and worried I wasn’t going to be able to finish my work, I did something I should have done this in the first place, and called Costco support. Remember though, I was up against a deadline and out of time, so it did not occur to me to call them sooner. In this, please cut me slack for my lack of foresight.

After 45 minutes on the phone, the computer was running speedily again. However, there was one problem that the tech could not figure out. I now have to log into my wireless by going through the control panel, going into network preferences, and re-entering my security key every single time I log on. I used to be able to right click on the now disabled icon on my taskbar, click my network, and voila! Logged on. Not any more.

The worst thing though, did not appear until I sat down to finish drafting the response due in five days. My Adobe Acrobat did not work. Every time I opened it I received an error message letting me know the registration had been corrupted and I needed to uninstall and reinstall. I ran an uninstall repair, but this did not fix the problem.

Frantic, I called my office to see if they had a serial number. The only serial number they had for me was one for Adobe Standard. I had Pro and needed Pro. The Standard would not work. I kept trying to do my job around the error, but it wouldn’t work. I optimize scanned text. I insert and delete pages. I enter in text boxes and rectangles. I used Acrobat. A lot. No more. Finally today, up against the deadline and sobbing in frustration, I uninstalled and reinstalled a trial version. Unfortunately it doesn’t allow the user to do any of the functions I use. In tears, I called my friend Debbie. She took my documents, made them into PDFs, stuck in the Exhibit words, and bundled them all together, then emailed it back to me to file. I wasted so much time on this problem, the response wasn’t nearly as tight and good as it could have been, and I filed it near 4 in the afternoon.

During this, I called Staples. I have a salesperson online who helps me with purchases. I had written him an email on Sunday after wasting two hours slogging through computer problems. He called me Monday. We played phone tag until today. He said the store had told him I said the computer had viruses. No, I never said that. He wanted to three-way call with the store to get this straightened out, so we made an appointment for tomorrow, after the big monster response was turned in.

Today, during my frustration, I called the store and asked to speak to the manager. He knew my case. He said the techs told him I said the computer had a virus. I never said that. He said my computer was “riddled with viruses.” That’s funny, because that’s not what they said and if their “tune-up” was supposed to clean viruses, why didn’t they do it? Why did they say it would be $200 to do that or give me any information at all? He said the “tune-up” had failed. That’s interesting, because my receipt says it worked just fine, that only one update failed. Well, your computer is riddled with viruses. So you’re telling me that my computer, which worked just fine and dandy until the day I got my computer back from Staples, magically developed viruses that only affected Adobe after I got it back from you? No answer? And are the viruses the reason the internet hookup icon on my taskbar is disabled and that no amount of tech support with Costco will bring it back? Yes, it must be. No apology, only an offer to bring the computer back and let the trolls get their hands on it again. Not on your life. Kick me once, shame on you. Kick me twice, shame on me. I’m not G.W.

What a load of horse pucky. Seriously. These yahoos want me to believe that my computer was riddled with viruses and that these viruses worked their magic only after my computer was left in their store. That, my friends, is a pile of steaming poo, a lie, a foulness, a thing most unclean.

I decided then and there to tell my story. My hope is that even one other person will read my words and decide that staples are for staplers, not a place to shop in. Take your business elsewhere. I’m going to. Office Depot is right across the parking lot.